Hopeless HOPE

THEY PROMISED hope, but delivered farce.

Timothy Hamel-Smith and Karen Nunez-Tesheira, as they launched a new political entity called Honesty, Opportunity, Performance and Empowerment (HOPE) last month, promised “to transform TT.”

On Tuesday, we got a taste of what that looks like. Or at least the “Performance” part.

Ms Nunez-Tesheira scaled a railing as part of a campaign to gain access to the funeral of Basdeo Panday, held at the Southern Academy for the Performing Arts (SAPA). Mr Hamel-Smith, who apparently came to the state event wearing sneakers, followed suit. Neither had an invitation.

The former PNM finance minister and MP, who resigned from that party last August and who unsuccessfully challenged Dr Rowley for party leadership in 2022, said Dr Amery Browne and Faris Al-Rawi ignored her. It would seem both government ministers demonstrated sound judgment in doing so.

Acting as advocate for Mr Hamel-Smith, Ms Nunez-Tesheira bitterly complained about how discourteous it was for a former president of the Senate to be so treated and said she would never have ignored her ex-colleague Dr Browne, with whom she served in a previous PNM Cabinet.

Yet it is precisely because both stormers once held such illustrious offices that their actions were gravely wrong.

Not even judges were able to secure invitations to the funeral. Having turned up to SAPA without themselves receiving passes, the irresistible inference is that both figures expected some sort of special treatment because of the important positions they once held.

What signal does that send to the country they wish to transform?

The irony is this hopeless and hapless show of theatrics occurred on the day the country commemorated the life of Mr Panday, a politician whose place in our collective imagination was secured by his innate sense that politics is drama. The former PM famously studied acting and appeared in films long before his political career.

But even Mr Panday understood that in politics, as in life, timing is everything.

Tuesday was not about Ms Nunez-Tesheira and Mr Hamel-Smith.

Even if both were truly wronged in some way and wished to highlight their plight at the hands of the PNM, it was not the time and certainly not the place to do so.

It was also a serious lapse of judgment for both lawyers to attempt to skip entry protocols which are designed to bolster security.

Another thing that Mr Panday – who had a contentious relationship with the media – understood was the power of a photograph.

Instead of highlighting her cause, the footage of Ms Nunez-Tesheira from Tuesday will only serve to damage her already wobbly standing, which has never quite recovered from the Clico Investment Bank scandal that precipitated her losing her parliamentary seat in 2010.